Matthew Wayne Selznick

Over at mattselznick.com, I’ve been writing about consolidation. With friends, I’ve been discussing obligation, and habit, and best practices, right action, and how all those things shift and change with circumstance, energy, and self-knowledge.

Over here, I’ve been wondering if I’m putting too many barriers up — barriers between users and content, and barriers between me and my creativity.

I’ve been asking myself the question: what’s best for my creativity? How do I work?

Well, honestly, at ‘pert near forty, I’m still figuring that out (forty is the new twenty five.) Writing in 2006 and the first half of 2007 has shown me that some things work, and some things don’t. This “open novel” experiment isn’t working.

I don’t have a problem with the concept of sharing the rough draft, the raw spewings of “Pilgrimage.” I certainly don’t have a problem with sharing my thoughts and observations as I write. It’s the platform. It’s the extra steps in the flow, and the extra steps that will be necessary down the line when I try to translate a manuscript from WordPress or MediaWiki into a word processor or text file. Line breaks. Paragraph indents. Stuff like that.

Plus, let’s face facts: Over 100 people have registered to see the “semi-public” portions of this site, but the interaction I was hoping for comes from a very small handful of stalwart folks — the same folks who are kind enough to comment consistently on all my sites. I love you folks (you know who you are) and I’m confident you’ll go where I go — confident, and grateful.

So. Here’s what’s happening:

• I’m gonna write Pilgrimage in Open Office, or a text file, or something normal like that, with an outliner or spreadsheet to help out. Like I wrote “Brave Men Run.” Like I wrote “Reggie vs. Kaiju Storm Chimera Wolf.” It works.
• Pilgrimagenovel.com will redirect to a Pilgrimage category at my personal site, mattselznick.com — this is part of the Great Consolidation. I’ll continue to post about the process of writing this book, and I continue to encourage you to comment. This will happen probably before the first of July 2007.
• Naturally, the need to register will disappear. If you want to keep up with my life and times, as always, you can subscribe to the newsletter — and I hope you have, or do.

I feel a little weird turning my back on the original deal — writing in public. Still, I gotta hope that what you all really want is for me to finish the book. That’s the goal here, right? So thanks for bearing with me while we tried this out, and thanks for understanding now that I’ve realized it was a misstep on the rocky road of Matt’s Productivity.

The Great Consolidation continues!

Matt Maxwell and I met in seventh grade, wrote a bad superhero “novel” one long weekend in the summer before high school, went to different high schools, re-met (well met) in the late eighties / early nineties, fell out of touch, and through the magic of the Interwebs, came back into contact a couple of years ago. He’s the one person I’ve known longest in my life that I’m currently in contact with, and that’s pretty special.

We’ve been corresponding, and it’s very pleasant to know that we’re both still dedicated to the passions that drove us as kids: comics, superheroes, science fiction, and geekery in general. I’m happy to announce that his very own comic, Strangeways, is just about set to finally debut.

So here’s to you, Matt! Everybody, go check out some preview pages of the first part of Strangeways, “Murder Moon,” and snatch up a copy or fifty when it hits the stores!

Recently, unauthorized video footage of MWS Media podcasting personality and author Matthew Wayne Selznick was captured at Balticon 41. This footage has made it onto the Interwebs thanks to the propaganda-spewing opportunists at Lulu.tv.

Matthew Wayne Selznick and MWS Media urge you to call attention to these cowardly vlog-paparazzi by spreading the word on Digg, Del.icio.us, and other social bookmarking sites. Just click the Share This button, below.

You must take 46 minutes — time you can dedicate to an immersive, intense audio experience — and listen to Tag In The Seam episode 25, “7 Things I Will Never Tell You.”

This is the best single episode of a podcast I have ever heard. Period.

It’s like an episode of Joe Frank’s “A Work In Progress” without any of the restrictions of radio and from a female perspective. It’s like the work Jim Ladd did in the eighties on Los Angeles radio station KMET… without the restrictions of radio, and from a female perspective.

Listen to it. Trust me.

The Midwest Teen Sex Show is exactly what you think it is. And it isn’t.

It’s a new video podcast featuring a Midwestern mom dishing the dirt on (so far) female masturbation and abstinence. There’s a lot of irreverence, and hilarious visuals… and there’s also an almost subversive honesty, a sense of “we’re joking around, here, but you better be listening to me, little sister, because I know of what I speak.”

So, yeah, it’s about teen sexuality…. but it’s for teens, especially teenage girls, to help them understand themselves. So put it away, Uncle Ernie, that’s not what you’re looking for.

It’s not parody. It’s cleverly educational. It’s paroducational. It’s gonna help a lot of kids. I salute the producers!

Check it out.

(Thanks to Steve Eley for giving me the heads up on this ‘cast.)